Chapter II

The Growing Frontier

William Houston had once asked, "Where are the people, Mr. Murray, where are the people?"

They came. They came in ox carts through unmarked wilderness trials, by river barges floated down the Ohio and pushed by poles up the Miami River to the portage. They came by horseback through the Great Black Swamp to the north. They came by the long boats across Lake Erie and up the Maumee and Saint Marys rivers. They came by the long overland trail from Pittsburgh over rugged mountains following a poorly cut grade that was later to become The National Trail, then U. S. Highway 40. Today, Interstate 70 speeds the modern traveler over wide ribbons of concrete where an hours time will cover more miles than his ancestor trekked in a month of torturous labor.

In many cases the arrivals were whole family groups, parents, children of all ages and grandparents. Their amazement at the vastness of the forests through which they had passed had long since been dulled by their ordeal of just getting here. Usually though, the new emigrants consisted of an advance party of the men folk who would locate their land, make a clearing and erect some kind of a shelter. Then as the hard freezes of winter set in they would go &back over the mountains" for their families leaving one or more of their party to survive the cruel mid-western weather. As the soft spring arrived, the families would again be reunited and all hands were busy clearing, planting, preserving, building and creating a new life on the frontier.

These people came, yes; they came from all walks of life, the skilled and the unskilled, the learned and the untutored, the rich and the poor, the descendants of old Dominion planters, Dutch patroons and Yankee families with ties to the Mayflower.

They came right down the gangplank at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, James River ports from sailing ships of all of Europe. Some were fleeing the war torn area of Napoleon's new empire; others sought escape from the new spirit of militarism in their homelands. Others came to avoid heavy punishment for minor crimes such as indebtedness or bondage, but one thing was certain-they all came to seek a better life, to breathe a freer air and to prosper according to their energy and effort.

Each group brought with them something of that which they were leaving behind. Grape cuttings from the valley of the Rhine, plum stones and peach stones from the orchards of France, herbs from the gardens of England, all securely bundled and tied to the underside of the lumbering wagons, as were chickens boxed in crates tied to the tail gate and good dairy cattle as Jerseys and Holsteins following along under the watchful eye of the traveler. Hogs, cattle and horses foraged for their food in the forests each evening as the campfires twinkled along the trail.

Weary wagoners repaired their carts from the damages of each days wear while their womenfolk were preparing iron kettles of bacon and beans to simmer in the cookfire overnight.

As darkness began to settle over the campsite, one of them would likely open an old well-worn Bible for a "reading," followed by an old hymn sung in English, German, Dutch, Irish brogue, or French. It did not seem to matter much to such a group that had met up along the trail and were all headed for the Ohio Country.

Rations of whisky or rum were meted out to "ward off the chills and fevers" and soon the valley was as still and quiet as it had been for thousands of years.

Wagon trains were headed west. By 1823 much of the lands in southern Ohio had been claimed by the Sciota Land Company, the Ohio Land Company and by the 'Symmess Purchase. Good lands were still available in these areas, but the new Congressional Lands beginning at Saint Marys and extending north to Lake Erie were now offered at an established price of $1.25 per acre with small sized plots available to those who had to earn their way.

The William Henry Harrison Land Bill had provided for purchase of land at the figure set by Congress and allowed the purchaser three years to pay for his claim. At the going rate of thirty cents a day, a man could easily find work